Meet The Craft Distillers Of Native America

Keeping distilleries away from reservations meant years of keeping profits away, said Kevin Kosar, the vice president of policy at the R Street Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based free-enterprise think tank that has helped raise awareness of the ban in the past year.

“There is a significant amount of money on the line,” Kosar said. “Small distilling is booming in this country, following the same pattern we saw with craft beer and, before that, craft wine.”

The booming demand for local artisanal goods will encourage more tribes to join the industry, R Street’s Kosar said, and support economic development that reservations surely need.

Help from people like Cirillo can bring tourists traveling from Minneapolis and Chicago, attracted to the pristine Lake Superior waters and wild Apostle Islands just offshore, onto the reservation. Despite its checkered role in Native American history, alcohol may give a boost to the tribal economy here in northern Wisconsin and on other reservations nationwide, R Street’s Kosar said.